lol my blog

Wow, I have really dropped the ball here.  The stack of read-books, waiting to be blogged, stands unmoving next to my computer, growing steadily as I read, pile, and then procrastinate.

But NO LONGER!  I'm going to bust through this pile in a new format, inspired by the extremely funny (I guess, if you're, like, in academia, or a college senior) tumblr lol my thesis.  As you can read on the About page, lolmythesis was started as a procrastinatory measure in 2013, by a Harvard College student who was looking for ways to avoid working on her senior thesis.  Submissions consist of one sentence (more or less) descriptions that succinctly and sometimes hilariously describe capstone projects.  For example:

When you ride your bike a lot of stuff happens to your blood.   But probably not this stuff because all the subjects were hungover.  (Kinesiology, James Madison University)

We drugged the hell out of some crayfish and then poked them to see if they would move.  They didn't.  (Biology, Mount Holyoke College)

You haven't heard of this 16th c. Flemish playwright named Cornelis Everaert, but you totally should have.  (Medieval Studies, Cornell University)

You get the idea.  Let's see how I do.

Ashenden, or The British Agent (1927, this edition, Doubleday, 1941) by W. Somerset Maugham
British spy gets up to weirdly bloodless (until the very end) derring-do in Switzerland and France and Russia during The Great War.  But what is his first name?
Read it if you are a student of the genre like moi.

Absolution by Murder (1994, this edition, Signet, 1997) by Peter Tremayne
Unsurprisingly red-headed seventh-century Celtic nun investigates a murder in the abbey while the future of Christianity is debated by a lot of very learned religious people.  Is that a future love interest?  Nope, 'cause he's a monk!
Read it!

The Blood Royal (2011, this edition Soho Crime, 2012) by Barbara Cleverly
Why am I still reading this?  Joe Sandilands, you should have stayed in India.
Skip it!

Real Tigers (2016, John Murray) by Mick Herron
Another win for the Slow Horses, another loss for British integrity.  On to Brexit!
Read it first!  A selection from the British Crime Club at the Mysterious Bookshop.

Bring Up the Bodies (2012, this edition Picador, 2015) by Hilary Mantel
Thomas Cromwell does Henry VIII a solid by getting rid of wife no. 2.  Hello Jane Seymour!
Read it!  Even though you know how it ends.  And even though it is not crime fiction.

Beloved Poison (2016, Constable) by E. S. Thompson
Egotistical doctors clash with a gender-bending apothecary in gross Victorian hospitals, prisons and brothels.  Try to keep your limbs about you.  
Read it!  A selection from the British Crime Club at the Mysterious Bookshop.

The Lady from Zagreb (2015, G. P. Putnam Sons) by Philip Kerr
Bernie Gunther zooms through time again, this time bedding a hot Croatian actress in 1943.  But Goebbels likes her too so watch out, Bernie!
Read it if you're into Nazi-crime, or if you've read every other Bernie Gunther book so you might as well read this one too.